Psychic Lies and Honest Truths
by kira66
Summary: Alex is in a bad mood and Bobby can't figure out why.


Bobby couldn't understand what had his partner so upset. One minute she was fine and next she was grouchy and snippy, not only with him but with the techs processing the scene as well. He wanted to ask what was bothering her but their partnership wasn't on firm ground anymore and he wasn't sure how she'd react to his seemingly innocent question. But as the days began to pass and her mood didn't change, he began to worry. "Eames, is something wrong?" It was the first time he broached the subject that had been weighing so heavily on his mind.

Alex looked up from her salad and narrowed her eyes. Why couldn't they just have a quiet meal for once? Why did he always have to talk over lunch? "I'm fine Bobby!" She snapped and roughly snagged a piece of lettuce with her fork and slammed it into her mouth before he asked any followup questions.

Pushing his half eaten sandwich away, Bobby frowned and leaned over the table, slightly. "Is it me?" He had the good sense to wait until she finished her bite before asking anything else.

The tone of his voice caused Alex to stop her assault on her unsuspecting lunch. Damn, he sounded like a lost little boy. "No, it's not you." She softened her voice, a little. Laying her fork down, she pushed her own meal away, her appetite gone. Just when she was going to elaborate, the door to the small eat-in deli opened, signaled by the tinging of the overhead bell attached to previously mentioned door, and in stepped the reason for her foul mood. "Did you invite her?" She hissed in annoyance.

Bobby, confused, followed her eyes to the door. "Invite who? Oh..." It took him a moment but he finally zeroed in on whom she was talking about. Said person was a fifty-something, grey haired, blue eyed woman. Still confused, he shook his head. "She's from New York, Eames. It's only logical to assume that she knows all the good places for lunch."

Alex snorted. "Maybe she saw Martin's was having a lunch special in one of her _visions_." She couldn't get anymore sarcastic.

"You don't like her?" Bobby asked and then suddenly everything seemed to click into place. Her mood went to the darkside the very moment she had found out that Janice Rhys was more than a Reginald family friend. To be specific, she was a Psychic. So caught up in his new found understanding, he didn't even see Ms. Rhys order and leave.

As the silence began to stretch, Alex began to fidget in her chair. She could just see Bobby's mental wheels turning as he pieced together information from the passed three days. "Just ask already!" She blurted out when she caught his eyes.

Bobby was surprised when she gave him permission to ask his questions. "What do you have against, Ms. Rhys?"

Alex sighed, grabbed her discarded salad, swung around in her chair and tossed it into the garage. She used this time to gather her thoughts so when she swung back around to face him, she was ready. "You remember Jack, right?"

"Sure, he's your youngest brother, right?" Bobby knew the Eames' family only because he had spent a number of holidays with them.

"Right. He was born when I was ten so that meant my sisters and brothers were a lot older. Anyways, when he was four he disappeared out of the backyard. George was suppose to be watching him but his girlfriend came over and he forgot all about Jack. By the time he remembered, Jack was gone. When I got home from school, the police were already there. I guess it paid to be a brother cop back then because there was more cops participating in the search than actually protecting the city. After a day and a half of searching, my parents were beginning to fear the worse until _she_ came." She growled. "Called herself Ms. Knight, a Psychic, and assured my parents that Jack was safe and sound and had wondered out of the backyard on his own. She promised to help the police, for a fee, to find him. My parents paid her, she hung around for two more days spouting out meaningly clues to his whereabouts, when he was going to return home, and that my Dad had been Blackbeard the pirate in a previous life, then disappeared with the money."

Bobby didn't say anything, just silently urged her to continue.

Alex sighed and folded her hands in front of her on the small table. "A week later the police got a tip that an old man was holding a little boy captive on the next block over. Apparently his...his screams and pleas were keeping the neighbors awake and they finally had enough and called it in." She paused and looked down at her hands. "Jack was in pretty bad shape when they found him. The doctors thought for a while that he wasn't going to make it."

This was something Bobby would never have guessed happened to the Eames family. "But he did, obviously."

"Yeah, he did. But I'm betting for the longest time he wished he hadn't." Alex looked up at her partner. "Thomas Luanda confessed to luring him out of the backyard with the lost puppy ploy. He then took him to his house and locked him in the basement where he...took Jack's innocence many times over. What he forced him to do in return for crusty bread and watered down milk was enough to make my Dad sick. Jack wasn't the same after that."

Bobby reached over and laid his large hands over her smaller ones. "I'm so sorry, Alex." He whispered. "I think I understand now."

Alex gave him a sad smile. "I don't think you do. If that con-artist hadn't wasted the police's time, they would have found Jack sooner. They would have had people on the tip line sooner, the neighbor had been trying to report the screaming for several days but no one wanted to listen because the _Psychic_ said he was alright and had just wondered out of the backyard. I almost lost my brother because of her. And now I see the same thing happened to the Reginald family. She's doing the same thing that other hack did. Assuring them that little Gregory is alright and will be found unharmed. Who is she to give them false hope? Who is she to lie to them?"

"Sometimes people need false hope." Bobby didn't elaborate that statement, he didn't have to. "You just need to have a little hope that _we'll _find him, with or without her _visions_. It's what we do, right?"

"Yeah, it is." Alex felt her dark mood break and she offered him a genuine smile. "Let's get back, I want to take another look at the nanny."

Bobby stood and put on his coat. "You think she lied when she said she didn't hear anything?"

Alex nodded as she stood and put on her own coat. "How can you not hear someone break in, shoot one of your employers, kidnap the kid, all while your only two rooms away making lunch unless your involved?"

"Good point." Bobby was surprised that he hadn't picked up on that lie but then again his mind had been elsewhere. "So what does Jack do?" He knew that her entire family was made up of cops and firemen but he couldn't remember which Jack was.

"Jack's a SVU Detective. They say he's the best at what he does." Alex smiled a proud smile. "No one knows about his assault, Bobby. The records were sealed after Luanda confessed to kidnaping, assaulting, and killing three other little boys. He got life without parole and my baby brother got a second chance."

Bobby held the door of the deli open, waved to Martin, the owner, and followed his partner out onto the snow covered sidewalk. "He still living?"

Alex shook her head as she snuggled into her coat. "He was killed three months later when a fight broke out in the exercise yard."

"Got what he deserved." Bobby commented as he lead the way back to One Police Plaza.

"Let's get this bastard, Bobby, okay? Mrs. Reginald's already lost her husband, I would hate to have to be the one to tell her that her only child is gone as well." Alex kept her head down to avoid the arctic blast blowing down the street.

Bobby didn't mind the cold, it kept him awake and alert. "We aren't Major Case for nothing." Was his answer and it was true. They were the best of the best. They'd get whoever destroyed this family, they always did. And they didn't need the hack, eh, Psychic's help to do it.


End file.
